Indian Companies Embracing Linux Faster Than Ever

cpatil writes "CNBC-TV 18 India has just announced that India's largest Insurance company, LIC(Life Insurance Corporation of India) sealed a deal with Red Hat to use its desktop and server software. LIC has roughly 160 Million customers, making it a non-trivial deal. Leslie D'Monte over at rediff also has a closer look at Linux deployment in India."

What about Windows?

[MarkByers]

They are probably embracing Windows faster than ever too.

Re:Using is one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Existence of the market will incite the software companies to contribute. You don't really expect an insurance company to work on the operating system, do you?

I think its about time...

[zappepcs]

I think its about time that, even though this piece was slightly biased, mainstream media began looking seriously at the behemouth that *nix has become. Its always been in data centers, and Linux is fitting in well there. The only reason that mainstream view of desktop software is so biased is simply because these people grew up knowing only Windows or Mac, and so that is, to them, how computers are supposed to be, and perform. When someone else comes along with something new, it is always compared to the existing system to see if it measures up.

Now, I'm not saying that Linux is a perfect replacement for XP or OS X, but I remember the arguments about using F3 vs. F1 for the help key, and if you have ever seen Windows 3.0 or earlier, you'd know that there were plenty of people, myself included, that said meh, I'll keep using DR DOS thank you very much. The fact that Linux is the new kid on the block is all the more reason for MS and others to fear it. It *IS* changing everything.

It is about to the point that if a card or MB won't be supported by Linux, I can leave it setting on the shelf, and so can a lot of other people. The fact that there are examples of this, and WHOLE countries (apparently) leaving Windows for Linux means that the revolution is happening, slowly, but it is happening.

This story is not so exciting for those of us who have been waiting for it, expecting it, and are now ready to hear the daily updates in application development that surpases MS's capability to keep up. F/OSS is a better way to do thing, and I think (hope) that CLAMAV and others will show the Bill schills and others exactly what can be done to stop spam, virii, and malware. You know, something along the lines of "here, download the software.. its free.. and only 14.99/year for updates. Then someone fix the F/OSS mail clients to utilize global white and black lists etc. and some of the other ideas for stopping spam for only moderate yearly costs... say... hmmm 14.99/year maybe?

Look at what Vonage and Skype are doing to the telecomms business arena. That is pretty much the same sort of apple cart upsetting that's happening with *nix right now. I'd love to see a *nix distro that is first to be ready (out of the box) to be used to download television, movies, etc. ... you know, like a "Ubuntu media edition for Dell computers" ... or something like that.

I'd just really like to see totally heated up competition in all media markets. iPod! your days are numbered. CD player? your days are numbered. Solid state memory is able to hold as much, in smaller spaces, and is more flexible. I'm just waiting for someone to create the hardware that will supercede CD's and DVD's altogether... leapfrog this whole BR-HD-DVD argument.

Anyway, the point is that this news, isn't really news to some of us, and it should not be shocking to anyone. Bring on more news like this is what I say... we can all use good news anyday.

Pseudo-tech

[Tyr_7BE]

Based on the price, vendors classify servers as small (anywhere from Rs 40000 up to Rs 500,000), medium (from Rs 500,000 to Rs 1 crore) and large (over Rs 1 crore). They are identified as Intel (or X86 processor-based), Unix (or non-X86 processor-based) and Blade servers. Linux and Solaris are flavours of Unix. Windows and Intel form the loosely-termed "Wintel" brand.

Since when did running Unix decide your processor type for you? Last I checked, BSD ran on X86 without much issue. Last I checked, Linux wasn't a flavour of Unix.

This is what happens when English majors get hired on to do tech writing. It becomes tech guessing.

Re:Pseudo-tech

[Theatetus]

Since when did running Unix decide your processor type for you? Last I checked, BSD ran on X86 without much issue. Last I checked, Linux wasn't a flavour of Unix.

The point is, vendors classify servers based on their chip type. The assumption seems to be that a CISC system will run some flavor of WINNT while a RISC system will run some flavor of UNIX (largely because there isn't any other choice for most of them). I could see calling a RISC system UNIX based on the fact that a large percentage of Intel systems are not running UNIX, while virtually every RISC system is.

And, yes, Linux is not a flavour of UNIX, just like the toy I had my dog fetch this afternoon was really a "flying disc" rather than a "frisbee (tm)", since it wasn't made by Whammo (tm).

Re:blah blah and yeah

[robertjw]

Where professionals go consumers will eventually follow. That's why everyone runs Microsoft platforms in their homes, even though when I was growing up Apple donated millions of machines to schools. The business industry wouldn't accept Apple in the workplaces, everyone wanted the same thing at home that they were used to at work, so Windows became dominant. If professionals move to Linux, eventually consumers will as well.

Re:More indians taking american jobs

[mspohr]

India is much more efficient at programming (and many other tech jobs)... perhaps one reason is that they use Linux and don't have to deal with Windoze.

A long way to go

[DesiVideoGamer]

I did some research/interviews in India and I can assure you that Linux has a long way to go until it can get wide adoption for Desktop Computers (lets ignore servers for now).

- Almost everybody in India has a pirated version of Windows XP (which came with their computer, so its pretty much "free" for them)
- Very few people I interviewed actually do Windows Update (probably because of the whole XP-Key validation)
- Unless he/she is a software engineer, they would have never heard of Linux
- When asked about spyware, they didn't seem to care. Most Indians didn't seem to care about the performance factor. They also didn't seem to care about identity theft as much either (the culture is such that most people pay just about everything in cash since most vendors charge a "service charge" for using credit cards or even a check)
- Bill Gates is more of a hero in India than a devil (his charitable contributions are well known)
- Tying in Gujarati in Linux (KDE) takes time and pratice to learn (I assume the same with other Indian languages)
- Some "cablenet" ISPs in India require you to run Windows software in order to connect to the Internet. There is no support for Linux at this time.

Those are just a few problems that I can think of on top of my head. There are plenty more issues in Linux Desktop adoption in India.

Re:More indians taking american jobs

[BeanThere]

Nice to decide that *someone else's job* is crappy and they *they* shouldn't mind losing it ... so long as it's not your job, right?

(I agree with you on the efficiency point though.)

Re:Critical mass

[Anonymous Coward]

"Linux has gotten to the point where Microsoft's FUD can no longer hurt it."
If it was a big western bank (f.x. CitiBank) or some other big multinational company, it would have ment that.

Indians DO help take our MONEY away!

[gd23ka]

When push comes to shove, like everybody else I worry about my wallet. This time it's not only about my wallet but also yours and everybody else's here, so think this through and try to keep your kneejerk reflex to a minimum: There are a zillion business opportunities where people could earn a minimum of $80 and more an hour if companies did not have the option of outsourcing to India etc or pulling in cheap, foreign workforces. The reason they have those H1B-visa's is of course to keep prices for IT from skyrocketing. I sell IT services, and I suppose you do too. Anything that keeps prices down is not welcome and if that means Ranjid from some village in India is helping to keep prices down then he's not welcome either. Nothing personal, Ranjid.

Re:More indians taking american jobs

[Hognoxious]

Indians happen to create application software efficiently.

Cheaply, yes. Efficiently, no.